"I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Tim but I just cannot see how his beats and my music are gonna mesh. He was talking beat boxes for crying out loud, and I really don't want to piss him off but it just doesn't…"

Renee could have been talking to the wall, for all the attention her words were getting. In truth she probably would have found the wall more receptive, but she was too cheerily chatting away to notice.

Justin probably looked for all the world like he was listening. His blue eyes remained focussed on her at all times, defying all normal behaviour. If it hadn't been for the need to blink or occasionally look at his plate to see where his food was, his gaze would probably have stayed fixed on the same spot for the entire forty minutes that they had been there. The pecan waffles were in fact very good but he had no idea they were, having ignored the taste of all food going into his mouth. The eating was an entirely secondary activity to the staring, and he was giving as much concentration to it as to her words.

He was trying to put his finger on what it was that was so different about her. There were obvious things like her hair and body shape; however, there was something far more profound separating her from the alter ego of his own reality. Clearly she was also in a far better mood than his girl, but that wasn't it either. Another glaringly evident one was that she ate like a pig - it had to be said. She wasn't messy, but he was fairly amazed by the amount she was managing to stuff away in that pretty little mouth of hers (and with very little break in the conversation, either).

Eggscentric had turned out to be an incredibly grungy little diner off of Main Street. Appearances, though, were deceptive - everything was clean, the food was good and more to the point it was quiet. They were sitting there sans security, and he hadn't seen one photographer. The booths were a disgusting shade of green vinyl (it reminded him vividly of wheatgrass shakes), the tables had scratched plastic surfaces and the counter looked incongruously sixties inspired. Nothing matched with anything else, the name was fairly stupid and he'd almost been surprised the cutlery hadn't been plastic too. The waitress was friendly, though.

"… I mean, how do you think I should bring it up with him?"

It took Justin a full twenty seconds to realise he had been asked a question and was now expected to answer it, as was customary.

"Umm… I don't know." He shrugged, shovelling food into his mouth so he couldn't speak for a moment.

"Well, he's your friend." Renee added some more sugar into and stirred her coffee with her spoon. "I like him and I don't want to burn any bridges but can you really see Timbaland producing on a Renee Anderson record? How the heck would that come off?"

He had to take some more time to process this information. Justin was having a hard time with the idea that a master hip hop producer would be best pals with the Prince of Teenyboppers. Then he remembered that his doppelganger apparently had a little more credibility than he did. It almost made him tempted to go look up his record sales too; it'd be nice if he could beat him at something.

"Well… I guess you either gotta just be straight with him or give him a shot in the studio and judge by what comes out."

"Maybe." She nodded, taking a sip of coffee. Justin was just impressed he'd managed to come out with a vaguely sensible idea. "You okay, babe? You seem quiet."

"Yeah." He gave her a flash of his best hottest-poll-winning smile and tried to look at ease. "I'm just doin' me some eatin', that's all."

"Like that ever stopped you yakking my ear off." Renee rolled her eyes at him mischievously.

He was trying to work out whether her dimple was more or less pronounced when her face was more rounded. As soon as he realised what he was doing, however, he chastised himself for constantly comparing her to somebody else. The whole point was that she was not that person, and he wanted to see what 'not that person' was like these days. Constantly comparing the two of them wasn't going to help his purpose.

He still wasn't quite sure what that purpose was, but he was working on it.

The table fell into amiable silence as Renee concentrated on the side of chocolate chip pancakes she had ordered. Her rationale had been that ordering wholemeal balanced out the chocolate. His opinion was that she had a sucking vacuum where her stomach ought to be.

There were a million and one things he wanted to know, but he couldn't broach the subjects knowing as little background as he did. It was all material that the Justin of this world would be able to recall at the drop of a hat, and it would look strange if he didn't remember things. That had been one of the things that had tipped him off about Renee when she had done her body swap - the amount of elementary stuff she hadn't known - and he was going to learn from her mistakes. If he was going to observe this life properly he needed to go undetected for as long as possible.

Claire was the person he needed, but Claire hadn't come around yet. If it was even Claire who would be his guide for this little trip: she had been this Renee's, but his own Renee (who wouldn't tell him much about her experiences of the college life she'd been dumped into) had been given a different guide, an elderly relative who had died when she was small. It occurred to him that she was probably dealing with the other Justin, who was probably extremely confused at this point.

Learning about alternate dimensions could seriously fuck with your head - he of all people knew.

In the meantime, without her to ask a few things and get some background from, he was stuck. He couldn't very well ask Renee how they'd met or what they did together or what had happened with her career. She expected him to know. There were certainly questions he could ask to get her talking on the topics, but they all required at least some level of common knowledge between the two of them before he could do it. Justin was gaining more and more empathy for what she had gone through on her little trip to visit him. He was second guessing every word out of his mouth, every look and every gesture, and it was fairly tiresome.

"Excuse me…"

The silence was interrupted by a lady in what looked like a cashier's uniform from a supermarket of some description. She was hovering in a way that was very familiar to Justin - nice to see not everything changed.

"…I'm so sorry to interrupt, but are you Renee Anderson?"

Renee smiled, rapidly chewing while gesturing at her mouth with her hand and rolling her eyes comically, causing the interloper to giggle. Finally she managed to swallow. "Sorry, I had my mouth completely full there but yeah, yes I am."

"Hi, I'm Marcia Perry," she held out her hand which Renee shook quickly. "I really am sorry to disturb you but my daughter Annie absolutely loves your CD and I was wondering if I could ask you to sign an autograph for her."

"Sure, if you have a pen, but I don't think I got anything good to sign… can she make do with a napkin?"

"You kidding?" Mrs Perry laughed. "I think she'd be happy if you signed an empty juice box or something."

There was a bright flash of teeth as Renee accepted the pen and grabbed a napkin from the dispenser. As she scribbled away on the napkin, the older woman turned to smile at Justin. The expression didn't quite go away when she met his harsh blue eyes, but it certainly faded somewhat as she fixed her gaze back on his companion, who seemed to be having trouble writing without ripping the napkin to shreds. He hated being bothered on his off time, and especially while he was eating.

Of course it had technically been Renee who had been bothered, but it was all the same to him. One thing he had never understood in all his years as a celebrity was why people couldn't understand the fact that there was public time and there was private time, and meals out were definitely private time. It wasn't like he had glared at the woman, but he wasn't going to make huge efforts to be friendly to people who disturbed his time with his girlfriend (even though she was, to be precise, somebody else's).

Renee did not fail to notice this, but the smile never wavered as she handed the napkin back to Mrs Perry and once again gave her the photo shoot smile. "There you go."

"Thank you so much, you just made me the world's best Mom. Thank you, I'm so sorry to have interrupted your meal."

"Not at all. Tell Annie I said hi."

Once she had left the café with her daughter's prize, Renee turned back to Justin with a somewhat annoyed expression. It was more disappointment than anger, but still the mouth was set firmly and the eyebrows had drawn just a little closer together. It was an unmistakeable frown.

"I'm almost impressed - you could not have been less friendly without actually insulting the woman. What gives?"

"What? It's not like I was rude to her." He shrugged defensively. "I just don't like getting bugged by fans when we're supposed to be on a date."

"Never seemed to bug you before." She raised an eyebrow, picking up her fork and pushing the last couple of pancake pieces around her plate. "At least not when it's one really polite lady who wasn't hurting anybody - it's not like it was one of your psychotic worshippers trying to hit on you in front of me."

This meant absolutely nothing to him, but her Justin would have known exactly what she was referring to. It had been pretty much agreed between the two of them when they would and wouldn't agree to give autographs if together, and Renee's fans probably got the better end of that deal. It had nothing to do with favouritism, but was based instead on past experience. When people were hunting for an autograph from one of them it was usually him, and his fans tended to be less painstakingly polite than the lady they'd just encountered. Some of them seemed to take great offence if he told them no (and at Renee's very existence), and there were far too many of them who had no sense of when it was appropriate to approach him.

Renee's fans, however, tended to be a little older and a lot less fanatical than his. This was no reflection on either Renee or Justin; it was just the reality of her genre of music and the lesser level of fame she possessed. She still had her share of overly invested ones or people who had little grasp of when it was and wasn't polite to advance for the autograph or the picture, but generally speaking they were a little better. Normally Justin respected that and was nice to Renee's fans if they were nice to Renee, so she was having trouble understanding why he'd given her the evil eye. The woman couldn't have been more polite if she'd tried; it wasn't as though she'd interrupted a candlelit dinner.

"Sorry, sorry…" Justin mumbled, reaching for his orange juice as he realised he had clearly made some relationship faux pas he wasn't aware of. "Just not in the mood to deal with the outside world today. What do you say we go back to the hotel and don't come out for like, three weeks?"

The three weeks was a Freudian slip of epic proportions, but Renee was of course completely unaware of this. Shaking her head, her irritation not quite dissipated, she still managed to fix a look of affection on her boyfriend.

"We both have recording to do and an anniversary trip to Vegas to take. Kind of difficult if we don't leave the room."

Justin's ears perked up at the mention of an anniversary. "Vegas…" He tried to avoid phrasing it like a question.

"Speaking of, where do you wanna stay? The Palms is supposed to be good, but I know you've been there more than me so I figure you got the scoop on the hotspots." The brunette decided that dwelling on the subject wouldn't do anybody any good - he'd been a little grumpy with a fan, it happened. He was only human.

"I don't know. I'll give it some thought. You about done, Ren?"

"Uhh, sure."

As Justin pulled out his wallet and tossed some bills down on the table, she collected up her jacket and bag. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but something was definitely up with him today. It wasn't the first funny mood he'd been in and wouldn't be the last but it did seem to have come from the blue, a little. He'd probably be fine in a few hours and it wouldn't make the smallest bit of difference to anything at all, but she was a little puzzled by it.

Quickly she decided not to press him about it. He'd tell her if he wanted to, but in the meantime it was probably best for her to just let him stew for a while and deal with it himself. It was entirely understandable, and in any other circumstance it would probably have been wise for her to so readily dismiss it. If she'd have thought a little harder about this particular instance, nonetheless, she might have wondered why he had just called her Ren.

Only one Justin Timberlake had ever referred to her as Ren, and it wasn't the one she'd been dating for the past year.